Not content with performing the stipulated humiliation, the burghers did more than Philippe had prescribed. They erected triumphal arches, adorned their houses and their public buildings with rich drapery, and strewed flowers along his path; nor was this all--at intervals they set up allegorical groups, typical of repentance and submission. Thus, hard by the _Porte de Ste. Croix_ stood St. John the Baptist, bearing in his hands a scroll on which was written: _Ego vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini_. Further on stood four prophets, each with his parchment scroll, after the manner of the figures in the painted windows of the period. On the first was inscribed--'Thy people shall rejoice in thee'; on the second--'The prince of God is in the midst of us'; on the third--'Come let us return to the Lord,' and on the fourth--'Let us do all that the Lord saith to us.' Thus did these worthy merchants cringe--an edifying sight--before the blood-stained tyrant who twelve months before had tortured and slain their noblest fellows. For them he had become as the Saviour of the Gospel, aye and as the God of Abraham, for they chose the sacrifice of Isaac to typify the absolute obedience which they owed to him. And who shall blame them? The craven cur who licks the hand which has struck him is after all a more sagacious beast that the mettlesome hound who resents an unjust blow by springing at his master's throat. The former is sometimes received back into favour, the latter is not unfrequently hanged. In the present case, as we shall see, the burghers had their reward. Till the close of Philippe's reign Bruges was at peace. During ten years a great calm reigned throughout Flanders. 'Remember Bruges,' Philippe had said to the citizens of Ypres, who for a moment showed signs of being restive, and the warning was enough. But the men of Ghent were made of sterner fibre, and when in 1450 Philippe would have taxed their salt, they broke out in open rebellion. For three years the burghers did battle for liberty with heroism and fortitude, but with so redoubtable an opponent there could be but one issue to the conflict, and in 1453, the year of the fall of Constantinople, the saddest year of the fifteenth century, Kervyn calls it, Ghent too was conquered. All this time the prosperity of Bruges was seemingly increasing by leaps and bounds, but it was but the glow of the sunset which presaged eternal night, though the pomp and splendour of the Ducal Court--the most splendid Court of the richest sovereign in Europe--made the sunset a golden one.